The invention relates to a bale collector comprising a roller bed with a number of horizontal rollers, which are positioned at right angles to a direction of travel and which are suitable for receiving thereon successive bales from a press outlet of a baling press and for having bales pushed backwards onto each other, whereby the roller bed comprises, viewed in the direction of travel, a front part and a rear part, which can swivel about a horizontal axis under control of control means which are coupled to the roller bed parts for moving a rear end of the rear roller bed part between an upper position which is higher than the front part and a lower position which is lower than the front part for allowing conveyance of a bale from the rear part onto the ground.
A bale collector of the above type is disclosed by DE-U-29517425. In an operating state, with the roller bed parts unfolded from each other and from the baling press, the prior art bale collector is suspended by chains and cables to the rear end of the baling press. In this state the roller bed is substantially straight and it has a length which is much smaller than the length of a bale. The prior an bale collector both provides a guidance means for bales when depositing them onto the ground, and allows safe transportation of the baling press and the bale collector mounted on the collector in a folded state.
With the prior at bale collector the bales supplied by the baling press are deposited onto the ground with fixed distances on which a user of the press and the collector has no influence. Thus, the bales may become distributed over the whole field on which the bales are made. This may be a disadvantage for time effective picking up and loading the bales from the field for transportation to a storage location.
It is observed that the length of the roller bed of the prior art bale collector is limited to prevent tilting rearward the combination of the baling press and the bale collector dependent on the weight of the bales. In this regard it is observed also that presently straw bales can have dimensions of 2.4 m long, 1.2 m wide and 0.7 m high with a weight of approximately 300 kg, while also presently silage bales of the same dimensions may have a weight of 500 to 800 kg.
The object of the invention is to eliminate the disadvantages of the known bale collector.
In order to achieve the above mentioned objective, the invention provides a bale collector comprising a roller bed with a number of horizontal rollers, which are positioned at right angles to a direction of travel and which are suitable for receiving thereon successive bales from a press outlet of a baling press and for having bales pushed backwards onto each other, whereby the roller bed comprises, viewed in the direction of travel, a front part and a rear part, which can swivel about a horizontal axis under control of control means which are coupled to the roller bed parts for moving a rear end of the rear roller bed part between an upper position which is higher than the front part and a lower position which is lower than the front part for allowing conveyance of a bale from the rear part onto the ground, and the lower position of the rear end of the rear part is of a height in which the rear part is inclined downwards with respect to the front part.
The bale collector according to the invention provides a buffer function which offers the user of the collector the possibility of depositing the bales in locations of his choice on the land.